Compliance
by CiderApples
Summary: Sometimes omniscience isn't enough.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer!** _Because it's gotta be here: I have absolutely no right to break other people's toys._

_A/N: This story takes place between the end of Season 1 and the beginning of Season 2. As such, **spoilers **occur._

* * *

The first time he saw it, it threw him. It was strangely innocuous, appearing and flickering away. It stayed in his head only because he couldn't quite place it-- he'd never seen it on her face before.

The eyebrows slightly knitted, slightly raised, as in fear. Her lower eyelids raised, top eyelids relaxing, as in anger. Lips parted in disbelief, but jaw tense and ears pinned back: fear again. It all seemed so vaguely familiar. He sat in his office, wearing the expression, practicing, trying to evoke a response in himself.

"Cal?" Her face appeared at the door, free of nearly any expression but her business mask.

"Yuh?" He let the expression fade, but not quickly enough. She looked at him oddly.

"You okay?"

"Fine."

She entered with files to discuss. He barely listened, staring at the fine musculature of her face. Slowly, without realizing, he leaned into her, scrutinizing. She was used to it, of course, but usually it happened over a larger—though still awkward--distance. Her eyes turned to Lightman.

He hesitated a moment before removing his gaze, and saw her eyes tighten. That expression... And then, just for a second, he saw the quickening double-time of her pulse in her neck, heard a slight jump in her breath, saw the pink rise in her cheeks. When he dragged his eyes away from her skin, he watched her pupils dilate right in front of him. And he knew instantly.

He didn't know what to say, and instead he mumbled something arrogant about the files strewn on his desk. She licked her lips uneasily. She knew he was thinking about something else, and that he was staring at her, and that she had missed something. She had given something away, she had let something slip and she didn't know what it was. She reached for the files, to retreat, to leave the room and the circle of his speculation.

"Hold on, luv," he said quietly, and his hand shot out and covered her wrist, holding it only just enough to still her movement. He could feel her hairs rising against his palm. His thumb by no accident rested beneath her wrist, against her pulse. She looked down, let her hair fall over her face, closing the curtain. _Read this signal, Cal._ He read it. He released her, and watched intently as her hair fell back when she raised her face to him. He watched the head tilt of embarrassment, the pursed lips of frustration. But most of all, that original, perplexing expression. It was all over her.

"I have to make these calls," she said.

And then she had gone from the office, files in hand, her steps measured and steady and no tell-tale manipulators for him to read as she went.

Cal watched her go. Then he sat back in his chair and tried on the expression again. He let it settle into his features and took a few shallow breaths, trying to match her breath patterns. He felt the muscles in the back of his neck tighten, the muscles in his lower back loosen and warm. Something fluttered in his chest, a sensation he recognized as an adrenaline release. He was right, then. Arousal.

They had an agreement, certainly. Boundaries, and all that. He could understand why she needed it. Foster had always been terrible at hiding. Cal had been hiding for so long that it wasn't even second nature, it was his first. He didn't even know if he could have spontaneous physical expressions anymore. Even while he realized that person after person perceived him as cold, unfeeling, invasive and brutish, he believed it to be an infinite improvement to the terror of being exposed to the world. And it gave him the advantage when others exposed themselves to him, agreement or no.

Suddenly, he felt something painful and ugly creeping into his chest, felt his shoulders rise and tense. That she should have such feelings, and not share them...it felt like a lie. It felt like a lie, from her to him. Cal frowned. To him, a lie was more than a lie. It was a malicious act, and unfair act, a measure undertaken to shut him out. Suddenly he felt awash in anger and resentment. Even as her body demanded him, Foster didn't want him. Not in her head, not in her bed, not in her emotions, even though they spoke directly to him. It wasn't fair. He could understand Foster's need for privacy, given the line of work, but had he ever been anything but open with her? Of course he'd lied, but _for the case_, always _for the work_. This was personal. This was incredibly personal. This was _for him. _And she was keeping it, expecting that it would be ignored. Expecting _him_ to ignore a lie.

She should know him better than that.

* * *

Foster was on the phone, her back to him as he entered her office. He noticed, as if for the first time, the lack of her personal effects. The art on the walls was the same now as when he had hired her-- cheap, mass-produced prints. Where was Foster in this room? It was like a riddle. The whole room was lying to him, lying about her and her reasons for working here, lying like she was to him.

Abruptly, he removed one of the cheaply framed paintings from the wall. Foster turned. Cal stood there, painting in hand, staring at her.

"What are you doing?" she mouthed, covering the phone.

"Never liked these," he said. "Rather have your own?" Foster held up her finger at him and continued to speak into the handset. Lightman sighed and wandered to her desk as she finished the conversation. At the click of the receiver into its cradle, he was beside her. Awkwardly close, as usual, peering up at her. "Ever thought about decorating the place?"

She looked back at him, her face absolutely straight. "I'm not really the decorating type. I'm more the 'I work here' type."

"Hm," he hummed. "Right, then." He sat on the edge of her desk, making himself unavoidable. She crossed her arms and tilted her head at him.

"Cal?" she said, lowering her chin. Lightman gestured lightly with his hand, looking up at her.

"Doesn't feel like _you_ in here," he said.

"How would you know what _I_ feel like?" she asked.

"Dunno," he said. "Guess I wouldn't." He got under her, looking up into her eyes; she looked everywhere but into his. He made a small, pensive sound and huffed off into the hallway. She watched him go, leaning against the sharp edge of her desk. She felt as if she had just barely escaped something.


	2. Chapter 2

**_Disclaimer:_**_ I'm running these stolen characters into the ground!_

_A/N: Sorry, long chapter. No good place to break it._

* * *

It was late. It was very late. In an ordinary office, in an ordinary place with ordinary people, everyone would be at home with their ordinary families and relationships and dinners and comfort rituals. At the Lightman Group, light shone under the closed office doors as the human lie-detectors worked late in their coccoons. The hall smelled like take-out and day-old clothes.

He didn't want to leave the office. There was safety, certainty in the office that did not exist outside. In the office, Cal felt completely aware of himself, of others, of the paths that were and were not being taken. He could speculate freely about Torres or Loker, and yet they weren't _there_, couldn't perceive his judgment or judge him in return. His face was perfectly blank. He had no need to create a mask, sitting alone in the dim half-light.

Some nights he needed to retreat further, into the reading room. But not tonight. Tonight he wanted to think and project. About her. And she was already walls away-- no need for more walls between them. With any luck, she would come to him. Without luck...he would make his own luck.

What he really wanted was to go into the viewing room, pull up the tapes of their meetings, and look for signs. He knew they would be there, and it was his way to mire himself deeply; deeply enough, that he might forget that an uninterpretable, grey reality existed. A reality in which identifying a lie did not mean its effect on the world could be relegated to fiction: it was not this world that gave him the security he craved.

The viewing room was too near to her. She might walk by, walk in. There might be a confrontation, in which he would still have the upper hand but would lose this advantage, the advantage of knowing more. Of being willing to do what the opponent will not. Or, in Cal's case, having the will to force the opponent to do what the opponent believes she must not. Acknowledge. Take the forward step.

Cal tapped a pen on the desk. She wasn't coming. He had filled the margins of his blotter with nonsense doodles, faces with large, black eyes, parted lips, curtains of hair. It was so late. She might leave without coming to see him at all. Time to make his own luck.

With a deep exhale, Cal pushed himself up from the desk. Her office was only a few walls away. He could feel her as if she were radiating heat, unless it was his own blood racing beneath his face and in his ears. His shoulders felt heavier than usual, and were curled forward as if protecting his chest. Cal's brows furrowed. He felt strangely obvious.

_Easily fixed,_ he thought, allowing his expression to drop into nothingness, replaced by a light veil of concentration. With a deep breath he rolled his shoulders into alignment. He knew without needing to check the mirror that he was Cal Lightman, as he was supposed to look. As he was supposed to be. Harmless. Genius. _Right, then,_ he thought. And he left the cave, softly walking down the hall to her door.

_Tap-tap-tap. _

The door was already opening by the time she looked up, and Cal was halfway in before he even asked to enter. They both knew she'd never say he couldn't.

"Hey," she sighed. She was tired. Her head rested on a pale hand, limply propped on her desk beside a cold cup of coffee. Her lipstick had long worn away, and the color she applied to her eyes each morning had migrated into dark hollows just above her cheekbones.

_It's not fair,_Cal thought to himself. _It's not fair to do this now. She's got no chance._ Yet he felt compelled. He wanted to, part of him wanting to test her, and part of him wanting to punish her for thinking it was all right to lie to him about this. About _this_! He leaned heavily into the door frame. _It's not fair._

"It's not fair," Foster whispered. Cal stifled an involuntary tremble.

"What's that?" he asked.

"How a lie can change so much. So many people." She looked up at him with openly sad eyes. She knew he would read her. When it didn't matter, she didn't bother to hide. _I know it makes things less fun for you, Cal,_she thought. _Though it won't stop you from staring._ And it didn't. He loomed there, impassive as always. Waiting. She never disappointed him. "It's Alec," she sighed, "and you've heard what I have to say, so what's the point." Her head lowered, her eyes stared into the desk, and her hands came down to lie flat against the desk.

_Futility, _Lightman thought. _Surrender._ This was not part of what made him proud of Foster. _You chose this man,_he thought, _you chose him over someone better. _ Only his thin sense of modesty kept Lightman from finishing: _like me. _ He felt anger toward her, felt frustration, but kept his face still. _If you were...mine, _he thought, ashamed that he couldn't think of a better way to put it,_ you wouldn't look like that. Those expressions would be strangers to your face._ _You would be strong. I would make you strong. _And even as he thought it, Cal was unable to restrain a contemptuous twitch of his lip. _Like me? _he thought.

"What was that?" Foster asked. He hadn't noticed her looking at him, but there she was, her eyes locked on him. Why had he taught her to do this? "What were you thinking about?" He paused. In the time it would take him to think of a lie, he decided to tell her the truth.

"Personal. Personal stuff."

Gillian hung her head and exhaled. Disbelief. _Ironic,_ Cal thought. He understood, though. He lied, perhaps more than any of their clients, he lied to all of them. She knew it was his prerogative. He wished she knew he never felt good about it, that he resented being in the position to do it, and that she was the last person he wanted to deceive.

"You make it seem so easy," she said. '_Reading?'_ was about to leave his lips when she said, "Lying."

Cal shoved his hands toward his pockets, hooking his thumbs inside and tugging, exerting force to get rid of the unpleasant surprise he felt. Although he knew it was true, it made him feel dirty to hear it.

"Y'know I don't," he said, "if I don't have to."

"If you don't _think_ you have to," she said sharply. She shuffled the papers on her desk. It was a clear, telegraphed signal of dismissal. _Get out, Cal,_she thought. Cal knew about Alec. He knew, and that made him somehow involved in her humiliation and rejection, and it was too sensitive to share with him right now. It was too sensitive even to deal with herself. When it came down to it, she could understand what Zoe was upset about: _I know you can see I'm upset, Cal. So stop staring, stop reading, stop putting me under the lens. _Gillian knew she couldn't expect him to do that. As kind as he had been—at times—she knew he was who he was. She would always be a specimen when he looked at her._ Get out._

Cal felt frozen, still hovering in the doorway. She was uncomfortable with him. Uncomfortable, why? He was so far away, too far to see the minutiae of her face. Too far to see what he wanted to see. But he was giving her distance. _Aren't I?_

"You want me to go."

"Cal..." she hesitated. Always polite. She didn't want to seem cruel.

"It's a'right," he said. "I was heading out."

She swallowed hard. Cal saw a momentary pull on the corners of her mouth and a flare of her nostrils, and he knew she was fighting not to cry until he'd gone. _That's fine, luv. Have it your way._ He turned and swept himself back through the door into the hall, where he turned toward his office. Halfway there he heard her sob, once, and then she was silent. Not even a heavy breath.

It wasn't the sob that turned him around. It was the ensuing quiet, the heavy quiet of sadness being packed away, the deafening silence of a person internalizing misery. It sounded like his mother's room. Except now he was aware, he was awake, he was on his own two feet and he could walk back into that room and he could say,

"It's not fair."

She had heard him returning; he'd made no attempt to walk quietly, only quickly, urgently. And now he was here, standing again in her doorway, and she was looking up at him openly, showing him the private woe that he was interrupting.

"Yeah?" she said, and it sounded like a challenge. _Yeah, Cal? No, really, Cal? What do you even care, Cal? What can you do about it?_

"It's not fair," he repeated. He locked eyes with her, willing her not to break contact. She wearily indulged him. What else had she ever done but indulge him? She seemed so tired, so tired. He saw her head nod heavily and in a moment his legs had brought him to the edge of her desk and he'd slipped his hand beneath her jawline. She resisted, pulling up, and he withdrew—only his hand—and yielded to her that small autonomy.

Now he was close to her. Now he could see.

"People lie. People let us down," he said. His voice was low, rough, steady. "People do that and neither you nor I can stop 'em. We can catch 'em, but we can't..." She broke their eye contact. He tilted his head and tried to catch her gaze again. His voice faltered. Whatever he was doing, it wasn't the right thing. It wasn't working. She shivered slightly. Cal was suddenly terrified that, whatever the 'right' thing was, he wouldn't be able to provide it. He bent over the desk and reached for her face.

"C'mon now, luv," he said softly. His fingertips grazed the skin of her cheeks, the curves of her ears, and he pleaded with gentle pressure for her to look up at him again. His face was so close to her. If she would just look up, he would be able to see just what to do, how to feel, how to be for her. If she would just, even for a moment, just--

"Cal!" Her voice was sharp, high, and uncontrolled. It was oddly muffled, the sound bouncing first off her desk and jacket. Then again, quieter, but still without softness: "Cal. Stop."

He froze.

"Go home," she said. He could hear her direction echoing in his head, in his own voice. It was something he had no intention of doing. He was positive there would be no rest for him. Just thoughts, anxieties about her, in this room, sitting in that terrible, oppressive silence, with no-one coming down the hall to stand in her doorway. _No-one to make things worse, either,_ he thought suddenly. For the first time in a long time, he had no plan and no idea what to do. He thought for a long minute. She stared at the desk, waiting.

"No," he said finally. It was soft and quiet, but definitive.

"You don't have to save me, Cal," she said. Irritation bloomed on her features. The muscles in her arms tensed with the fists she drew into her lap. "I just don't have the energy to be...studied." He bit his lip and shifted his weight in frustration. Then he closed his eyes, and didn't open them again.

"Look at me," he commanded. It was a different vocal tone he used now, the tone he used in the viewing room and in the hall during business hours. This was a tone he was depending on her to obey reflexively, and she did just that. "Okay...you looking? Cos I can't tell."He paused. Though he couldn't see her face, he knew she was watching him. Evaluating the situation. "You're smiling," he said, forcing a smile, and he heard her sigh. "Kidding. Can't see a thing. Promise."

"Cal," she whispered. It was harder than he thought to read the voice without the face. That was supposed to be _her_ waited to see if she would continue, but she didn't. He felt her get up and walk away.

"No, no no," he said in a rush, "Look, I--" And then he heard the door close. Although sorely tempted, he kept his eyes shut. _For once, let me keep her faith._

"You didn't open them," came her voice. He let out the breath he'd held when the door clicked home.

"Didn't know if you were still here," he said. "I promised."

"Breathe," she said.

He did, self-conscious of the way his breath sounded in the otherwise silent room.

"Why are you here?" she asked. "You don't like Alec. You're probably—no, I _know_ you're happy he's gone. I'm sure you have work to do back in your office. I'm sure you have..." _...Zoe to do, back at home._

"I..." He paused, thinking. It was a question to which the answer had changed since he'd arrived in her office. "...want to be here." It was as true an answer as any could be. He couldn't gauge her response. She made no sound. He felt blind. He felt alone. He felt ashamed of the reason he'd come in the first place.

"Shame," she said. He felt her unasked question.

"Not of you."

"Who?"

"Me." His answers were fast and straightforward. He would not lie to her, not right now.

"Why?"

"Personal."

"Personal? Cal, we're-"

"Yeah," he interrupted brusquely, "personal. Just this once, okay?" Something in his voice persuaded her to leave it. She returned to her desk and pulled over an extra chair, to which she led Cal before sitting. Lightman perched on the edge of the seat and leaned forward, not sure of what it would accomplish but yearning to feel a little less sightless, a little less lost. Closer to the truth, and to her. He waited in silence. He could hear her breath change with the shape of her mouth, but couldn't envision her. After a long silence, he heard what seemed to be a sigh of relief.

"I'm making faces," she said. "I'm making faces at you, Cal. It's been a long time." _Unguarded. Myself. So many things I haven't been with you, out of self preservation._

Cal smiled half-heartedly, fearfully. He heard disdain and thinly veiled resentment in her voice. He reached out to her instinctively, trying to connect. She rewarded him with a cold hand, nearly the size of his own. Her palm felt firm and strong against his, and he held it gratefully.

"Don't make any dirty ones," he said lightly, "Got those cameras." He felt her tense up at the mention. "I won't watch these tapes," he said earnestly, immediately, fearfully. "That's the truth."

"You're afraid of me," she said.

"Not fair," he responded quickly. He hadn't realized his tells were showing. As quickly as the expressions had appeared, he wiped them away. _Hypocrite. _He paused.

"No," she sighed. "Why, Cal?"

"Can I open my eyes?"

"Do you need them to speak?" she asked sardonically. He didn't respond right away. He was thinking. As she studied him, the dynamics of his face began to change once again. His eyebrows knit, his forehead raised slightly, his mouth trembled, his jaw tensed. It was clear, it was wide-open, it was naked. It was fear, and because it was Cal, she knew that to display it had been a conscious choice.

"To you, luv, yeah. Yeah, I do," he said finally. His voice was different to her, it was changed. It was...charged, loaded. It was rough, heavy and full. She was stopped for a few seconds by the sound of it. She hadn't heard it before. He'd never let her hear it. It was the voice he'd shown her at the hospital, but there was something else. She was quiet. She waited. She wanted to see what he would do.

After a long silence, Cal's eyes opened to slits. When she didn't reprimand him, he opened them fully and looked at her. He couldn't help his first instinct to read her, and she seemed to understand, waiting patiently as his eyes skimmed over her face.

"You're not afraid a' _me_," he said simply. She shook her head.

"No," she said. She smiled wryly and looked down at her hands. It looked like she was smiling, but that couldn't be right. Cal squinted. Had he missed something?

"Why?"

"Why?" she shot back. Now she _was_ smiling, and it was Cal's turn to be confused. His mouth, slightly ajar, exposed his tongue worrying his bottom teeth as he stared into her face, forehead furrowed. His lips formed a "W" that he didn't speak.

"We're having a serious conversation. You ought to be nervous. At least uneasy," he said. He paused. "You're not concerned at all that I'll find out some..._truth _about you? Deep, dark secret? That sort a' thing?"

She looked at him. She smiled broadly. She seemed...over it. "Cal..." she began, and pursed her lips. "Cal, everything I have to say, you know. Everything I think is private, you know. I'm not afraid of you." She placed a hand on his lapel, feeling the silken fabric and faintly, beneath it, his escalating heartbeat. She felt him retreat under her palm and she pushed forward with her hand to keep the contact. "Why are you here, Cal?"

He looked down and curled his lip.


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N: Special thanks to JohnClark43, whose insightful comment inspired a closer examination of Cal's reaction to lies._

_Disclaimer: not mine, but hey, my birthday's coming up..._

* * *

He jammed his hands into her pockets and stared at his shirt.

"Cal," Gillian said. He felt like his name was the _only_ thing she'd said for a long time, and it was making him feel responsible, on-the-hook. He wished she wouldn't do that; he felt responsible enough for her. For everything he couldn't see and the unfortunate things he could_. _She was her own woman; she'd made that clear. She was happy, she was sad, but she was all right and she didn't need him.

But she _wanted_ him. Despite her lack of action, despite the days he spitefully told himself it was impossible, it existed and he had seen it. The evidence--that fleeting physical state--was what had given him the impetus to get as far as her office, into her personal space to provoke her. Which he'd thought was going well, until now_. _Until he'd realized she was right, and that for all his ninja mentalism he'd only made her position stronger; while he had all her _information_, all the ways she _seemed_, he had none of her _decisions_ because he had made none of his own. He'd made nothing clear to her, asked nothing specific enough to identify his desires, and so had received nothing specific in return as he read her. Her feelings didn't guarantee any action. Even her arousal was no promise, as promising as its discovery had been, and now the only way to get more from her was to give something of himself away.

To ask. And to ask would imply much more, because she knew _enough._

Cal took his hands out of his pockets. Maybe that was all right. Maybe it would be all right. He looked at Gillian. She was waiting, but not impatiently. Her face was perfect receptive-neutral. She wouldn't force his hand, but she would wait for him to play it.

He shifted his weight. He was telegraphing his nervousness, his impatience with himself, and it only made her calmer. As the silence expanded, it exposed him: every action he didn't take, every word he didn't say, the making and breaking of eye contact. He'd come in with such confidence, and now he began to feel angry with himself. He was avoiding, the lies without words that he found easiest to pinpoint, and it abraded his ego because he didn't like lying to Foster.

The real world was constructed with lies; holding things together like connective tissue. Relationships, partnerships, businesses, social constructions... There were artful lies, willful lies, white lies, protective lies, lies of passion, lies of love, compulsive lies and lies for the sake of lying, all of them stacking up in Jenga towers until he pulled out the right ones. He had nothing against them, felt nothing in particular about most of them. Mostly it was a game and a skill and something he was expertly, fantastically good at-- it gave him the direction and control that he craved in his life.

But between them, between himself and Foster, things were shifting almost as fast as he could re-examine them. In his reading room on late nights he attacked the wounds that her lies had begun to leave in him, slowly accepting that her lies were different because his feelings toward her had shifted _faster_ than he had re-examined them. By then it was too late, and this woman with whom he worked _every day_ could walk through the hallway in some technicolor dress and leave his feathers ruffled because she avoided a silly question about dating accountants. And there was Alec, and there was Zoe, and maybe Alec wouldn't ever really be erased and Zoe would never stop being half of Emily. It was complicated and delicate and made his desires rise up in conflict as a friend and a co-worker and a lie detector and a lover.

Now, sitting in front of her, things seemed to be unfolding separate of his will, un-complicating on their own. The more time passed quietly, the more he felt sure that she knew everything _he _had to say as well. Yet she did nothing. _And you know bloody well what she's doing,_ Cal thought. _No more than she has to._ He knew that was exactly what he'd like to be doing, except that he was the one who'd come to her, and that made the next move his_. _And he'd be damned if he wasn't going to make it.

"I think," he began in what he hoped was a charmingly halting stumble, "maybe, that _I'm_ the one who oughtta be afraid a'_you."_

She smiled in a way that let him know the act was cute, but that she saw it for what it was. He pressed his mouth shut and glanced down.

"Look." He said it finitely, with a sigh, and settled back. "You're my partner. You're my partner because you're as smart as I am. Not as scary or belligerent or willing to get tossed around on the job, but..."

Gillian gave back a small smile. An agreement smile. He hadn't expected that.

"Hey," he grumbled, "I'm getting scared you're smarter than I am," he said. Gillian raised an eyebrow mildly and smiled a lip-biting smile.

Two things occurred to him at that moment: that she _was _more than he'd given her credit for, and that he was not as impenetrable as he'd thought he was or tried to be.

She was voice, she was words, her skills matched his but they weren't the same. She had her own specialties-- if he'd believed she'd picked up his, he'd never have let her near him. At least, not like this. But he should have guessed it, should have known her. He felt instantly guilty for having underestimated her, and then just as quickly panicked for the same reason.

"Yeah," Gillian said. She reached out here hand and laid it on his arm, where it burned through his suit and left a print on his arm. He was left speechless for only a second.

"You know," he said. He tried to keep his disbelief in balance with the fact that he should have known. _I should have known from day one._

She nodded at him, that same smile on her face. If it weren't for the hope in her eyes he'd have thought she was playing him.

"Well, then," he said, chin to the ground and the corners of his mouth tugging down. The panic subsided, and maybe he was going to laugh, because he was _Cal fucking Lightman _and he owned this bloody company and he was, for the first time in a while, completely wrong.


End file.
